A Thriving Richmond 

Mayor Avula applauded the jointly-sponsored RES. 2026-R038, endorsing the City of Richmond’s legislative agenda for the 2027 Virginia General Assembly session. The resolution sets forth legislative proposals and requests the Richmond delegation to the General Assembly “to take legislative action consistent with and in vigorous support of such recommendations; to support other legislative action recommendations; and to encourage other organizations and individuals to support such recommendations.”  

 "My administration and City Council are committed to advocating for our residents' together and maximizing what we can accomplish in partnership with the Commonwealth,” said Mayor Danny Avula . “In the past, Richmond often had a divided agenda. Today, we’re moving forward with a clear set of priorities that reflect what our residents need and deserve.” The resolution identifies budget and legislative priorities and the City’s policies positions for the coming 2027 General Assembly session.  

Thriving City Hall 

Council also voted 7-2 to support Mayor Avula’s ORD. 2026-081to establish an updated approach for publishing the City’s payment register to promote transparency and accountability of public funds. Earlier this year, Mayor Avula proposed the ordinance to establish an updated approach to publishing the City’s payment register, with the goal of increasing public access to payment data while ensuring the system is practical, accurate, and compliant with privacy laws. The Avula administration is committed to maximum transparency, especially when it comes to City expenditures, while honoring individuals’ legitimate privacy concerns and data security protocols. 

“I’m extremely proud of our team for working through a long-standing, inherited, and very complicated pain point and finding a path forward that provides proactive public access to the City’s spending data,” said Mayor Avula. 

Publication had been suspended prior to Mayor Avula’s administration. In June, the City published the FY25 payment register. The FY26 Payment Register will be available on the City’s Open Data Portal by December 27, 2026 in accordance with the 90-day implementation period established in the ordinance. Additionally, the monthly publication of the register, starting with July, August, and September 2026, will be available on the Open Data Portal by the end of calendar year 2026.  

Thriving Families 

 A series of ordinances introduced by Mayor Avula were adopted to support Richmond families experiencing financial hardship and housing instability.  

ORD. 2026-282 provides $700,000 to Area Congregations Together in Services (ACTS) to administer the City’s Family Crisis Fund, an initiative which provides emergency financial assistance to families in need. The ordinances also extend an agreement with HomeAgain to continue operating a 50-bed, year-round emergency shelter for families through November 30, 2027.    

Thanks, Chief. Good morning, everybody. 

Thanks for being here for RPD's third-quarter crime briefing. 

Today, Chief Edwards is going to walk through the crime statistics year-to-date through the third quarter. After that, I'll talk about my recent decision not to renew the Flock LPR contract, and then the Chief and I will take questions. 

While every life lost to violence is a tragedy, and there's no “good” number that's not zero, the City is making remarkable progress in reducing homicides. 

Chief Edwards is going to share some very encouraging news about what's happening in Richmond. We're seeing all the right trends in our homicide rates, nonfatal shootings, and robberies. 

But we have more work to do. 

And while the Richmond Police Department continues to be successful in adding new recruits to every academy, the fact of the matter is that we're still operating with just over 600 officers, though we have an authorized police force of 755 to serve the city. 

You'll get a much more detailed analysis from Chief Edwards, but what he will share with you today is that the City of Richmond is seeing very, very good progress. 

I want to thank Chief Edwards, Deputy Chiefs Collier and El-Amin, and every single member of the Richmond Police Department for their incredible efforts, along with our Richmond residents who regularly work with law enforcement to help keep our community safe. 

Following Chief Edwards' Presentation  

Thank you, Chief. 

These numbers are remarkable. We are seeing historic lows in violent crime that we haven't seen in well over a decade. And we're doing it with a police force that, as I mentioned, is running above 600 officers, with an authorized force of 755. 

How are we doing it? 

We’re doing it because of good police work — good, creative, data-driven police work. 

We're doing it through growing our relationships with communities. The community policing approach is yielding wonderful results. 

And we're doing it through (the use of) technology. 

And that's why we have to be really thoughtful along the way about the way technology is integrated into the work. 

Obviously, the news of this past week has been around our use of Flock, so I want to touch on that announcement I made over the weekend. 

As I shared on Saturday, I made the decision not to renew the City's automatic license plate reader contract with Flock when it expires on June 30. 

I know that some people have asked why we're not ending the contract immediately, just like Henrico has decided to do. 

I can't speak to Henrico and the processes that went into its decision, but what I do know is that their contract was up in the next couple of weeks, and so they had to come to a decision point much sooner than we have to. 

We have more time because our Flock contract expires in June. I want to make sure we're using that time to listen well, to make thoughtful, community-informed decisions about the future of the technology in Richmond, and I also want to be clear with the public about what has changed for me. 

I have consistently approached this issue through a risk-benefit lens. 

I often talk about how, as a public health physician, every one of these decisions is looking at the risks versus the benefits and figuring out how we balance those well, and ultimately make sure that we're providing a net benefit to our community. 

What we have heard increasingly is both the public safety benefits as well as growing concerns about privacy and potential misuse. We’ve seen examples around the country. 

And I need to say that both of those points are valid. 

The surveillance concerns are valid. We take them seriously.  

But we also take seriously the responsibility that I have to listen to Richmonders and respond to their concerns. 

At the same time, I meet with the Chief every single week. We're diving into data together. We're hearing about the challenges the force is facing. 

And I absolutely trust his expertise and his judgment in using the technology responsibly, as well as his commitment to ensuring that the appropriate safeguards are in place and enforced. 

Now, what has changed? 

One, the significant expansion of community concern. 

And two, the decisions by our regional partners that affect how useful the technology can be to us. 

We've heard from many residents at City Council meetings, and those voices certainly matter. 

But we also need to hear from the people whose lives have been disproportionately impacted by crime and who may not be showing up at those meetings. 

RPD and our neighborhood engagement team will be co-leading and listening through engagement sessions across the city. 

And these will be conversations with residents, not media events. 

Our goal in those will be reaching voices that we haven't captured in a systematic way. 

And ultimately, these will be an opportunity to align our community vision with public safety expertise so that we can come together and actually achieve our collective goals for public safety across the city. 

I also want to clarify that Saturday's decision is specifically about license plate readers, not the gunshot detection technology. 

And we'll make sure that we're asking those questions and continuing to listen to residents about both during these next few weeks and months. 

We have not made a decision about whether another vendor will replace Flock. That is part of the work ahead, part of the listening work that we are embarking on. 

But my commitment is to make a thoughtful, well-informed decision that reflects the needs and the concerns of our community. 

And I'm always, always, always grateful to residents who speak up, who let me know what their concerns are. I expect them to continue doing so. 

That is the essence of our democracy. 

And my commitment, ultimately, in this role is to continuo to listen well and to seek out the voices of those who are marginalized and don't always get heard. 

And we're going to take our time to get this decision right.

Transcribed from Mayor Danny Avula's remarks at RPD’s 3rd Quarter Crime Briefing on October 13, 2026 by Copilot, reviewed and lightly edited for accuracy by a member of the Office of Strategic Communications  

Hey Richmond, It’s your mayor, Danny.  
  
I want to update you on something I know a lot of Richmonders care deeply about: the City’s use of automatic license plate reader technology, particularly our relationship with Flock.  
  
Last month, I promised that we would begin to reevaluate the City’s use of ALPR technology generally, and of Flock, the City’s vendor, specifically. I encourage you to go watch that video, and you can find the link in the description below.  
  
Today, I am announcing that the City will not move forward with the Flock ALPR contract when it’s up for renewal.  
  
This past Tuesday, Henrico County announced that they’ll also begin reevaluating their use of ALPR and have decided to move away from Flock. Now that Henrico has decided to end their contract with Flock, it clarifies the picture for me because Flock, specifically, is now less useful as a tool. Crime doesn’t stop and start at the City-County line, and part of what makes this technology a useful crime-solving tool, is our ability to work together with our regional partners. I’m encouraged to see that the region is joining us in grappling with this issue, an issue that is clearly so important to so many residents.  
  
However, the commitment I made to you all last month was to listen well and make a full, community-informed decision about the City’s use of ALPR technology.  
  
My team has started putting engagement sessions together so that we can hear from Richmonders whose lives have been impacted by violence and who want us to do everything we can to keep them safe, as well as Richmonders who are concerned about how the technology could be misused, particularly those who have experienced disproportionate policing, or have fears about that.  
  
Lastly, the General Assembly will be taking up issues related to license plate reader technology this session, and that work will be incredibly helpful in charting a path forward here in Richmond and across the Commonwealth.  
  
I’ll continue to pay attention to the deliberations and decisions that will come from our state-level leadership and ensure we’re responsive.  
  
So, while I've made a decision about the Flock contract, we have more work to do to ensure we’ve heard from residents who care deeply about this issue.  
  
As we move forward in this work, I promise to keep you updated on this topic. Thanks, Richmond. 

Good morning!  

I want to thank you, Ed (Solarz) and Genesis for having the vision and the patience to see this through. A six-year effort is remarkable. 

I was telling him earlier, my family lives around the corner, and so I spend every morning driving right past this intersection, picking up these three little boys and taking them to school. And so for years, I saw this empty parking lot. Sometimes there were trucks parked in it, sometimes there was a stretch of RVs parked in it, but there was never much going on. 

And so to see it now as a thriving building that has become a new community, transforming our city, is super encouraging. So thank you for helping to see that through. 

Six years is a long time, and there are lots of components and lots of complexities to getting projects like this done. Ed spoke to the creation of the capital stack here and just how complicated it is to put the money together to make things like this happen. 

Ed was talking through the amenities, the fact that this is transit-oriented development, right on the Fall Line Trail, a bus stop that's right here, bike parking to make sure that people are prioritizing biking and walking, building on a node that is part of our Master Plan development, putting solar on for more sustainability. I'm glad somebody can figure this out in the city. Super encouraging.  

But these are all of the elements of what a future-thinking, forward-thinking city has got to do, and this project is a great example of that. 

Again, I want to thank Merrick Malone, who runs the City’s Department of Housing and Community Development, for investing a million dollars of City money. 

I speak often about the fact that we cannot create affordable housing without public subsidy. And so the City has to be super thoughtful through our Affordable Housing Trust Fund, through our performance grants, through the use of ARPA funding, to help make deals like this pencil, and now we have 150 units serving households earning less than 60% of the area median income, an incredible addition to the affordable housing landscape here in Richmond. 

I think the other thing that I want to talk about is, Ed mentioned that this was a six-year effort, and a big part of that six-year effort is what happens on the front end: engaging community, getting community support: Councilmember Trammell, thank you for shepherding this through the process. 

Now, one of the things that we are embarking on as a city right now is a revision of our 50-year-old zoning code. And a huge component of that code reform process is changing zoning on corridors like this, on transit-oriented development, making it easier to build multifamily housing. 

We could have cut two years out of this process if it were appropriately zoned for the uses that the City has envisioned through our master plan. 

And so I want to hold this up as an example of why we need to see zoning code revision across the city, so that we can have more projects like this in every part of our city, on these major nodes and corridors. 

But this is an incredible example. We're so excited to see the work that you have done. We're excited to have 150 more units in our affordable housing portfolio. 

As I share often, over the last five years, the City has invested $120 million to subsidize affordable housing. That's created about 5,800 units that have either been completed or are soon to be completed. 

And that's the work that we've got to do. 

Affordability and affordable housing have been at the top of our priority list. 

When I decided to run for office, a lot of that decision was actually motivated by my experience in the East End, where for a decade I watched the housing conditions change, the market change, and lower-income families get pushed out of my community. 

And part of what I came into this job saying is that we have got to make investments on the front end so that folks don't get pushed out of communities, and so that we can continue to have communities where people across the income spectrum can live together in mixed-income neighborhoods. 

And so this is a phenomenal example of how we're going to get there as a city. 

And again, I can't thank you enough, to the Breeden Construction team, to the Johannas Design team. Just an incredible partnership to get this project off the ground. 

Well done. Thank you so much.

Greetings! Thank you for having me. It is really a joy to pay honor and respects to a legend in our Richmond community 

This is a wonderful day to honor a man who gave so much, not only to this congregation but to our entire city.  

Forty‑five years of serving from this pulpit, and also serving Richmond far beyond the pulpit in ways that you all know: Reverand James was a teacher. He was a servant. When he  was not preaching and teaching at Virginia Union University Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, he was supporting the work of the NAACP and the State Baptist Convention.  

He had a huge heart for justice. He made time to serve on the state parole board, and he was a chaplain at the former Spring Street State Penitentiary -- the first African American to serve in that counselor role.  

He cared deeply about equality—always on the leading edge—fighting for women’s leadership in the church. And now we see the amazing women that are serving all across Trinity. 

He led the church in the deep work of mercy ,  He opened the doors of this place to the unhoused, allowing Trinity to be a hub, early on for Caritas, years before we had a permanent one on the Southside. He was one of the first leaders to step forward and open the door to say, “We need to be able to serve this community.” 

He believed in creating community. As you all know the value of the Trinity Family Life Center, just a few miles from here. For years, that place served as a village to so many people in the city—whether it was sports, programming, or food provision.  

That was actually my connection - when I was working in the health department, we were doing a lot of work with Trinity at the time.  That was a time when we were able to support some of the family strengthening, the fatherhood work. And Trinity again was just on the leading edge—partnering with the government and caring well for the residents of our community. 

That lives deeply into my own story here in Richmond but has touched touching thousands of people.  

He, through all these things, embodied what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ. There are countless people in our community who are better as a result of it.  

He also believed in the importance of civic engagement. He was a mentor, a supporter to so many up‑and‑coming young political leaders—and caried on a long legacy of the important influence among Black pastors in our political process. And I think his influenced pushed those of us in politics to remember that this wasn’t about the glory, this wasn’t about the media, this wasn’t about the stature. But it was really about the moral obligation we have to do what is right—and to make decisions for the sake of the people that we are committed to serve. For the sake of young people and families who want a better life. For the sake of those who are on the margins and often not heard, but who are central to our city and central to the gospel that was the light of Reverend James’s life. And so I can think of very few people in Richmond who more deserving of this honor of naming a street after him. I’m so thankful we have the opportunity to do this. Blessings.